As promised, I’m writing one last post here to link you to the new home of Intentional Catholic. Please click through to Substack and subscribe there. My welcome post there is the reflection I wrote when I started this journey four years ago, but I have a bunch of new topics lined up, and will be mixing in some past reflections as well.
Moving the party
A heads up to everyone who reads here: I am moving this party to Substack beginning Monday morning. Those of you who are subscribed by email will receive a newsletter/post this weekend, which will be a repeat of the post I wrote four years ago to start this project.
If you are NOT subscribed by email, but through WordPress, I will post once more here when everything is ready to go, in order to share the link with you. I do hope you will join me there!
It’s OUR fault, too
This morning as I was reading this reflection written by a Steubenville alum, this quote stuck out at me:
“I’m scared that if I pull this thread and start to doubt and reexamine my experiences at Franciscan, my faith will start to unravel, too.”
As I watch people very close to me shedding their Catholic faith, it is clear to me that how the Church, institutionally, and how we, as individual Catholics within it, represent Christianity MATTERS. It can lead people to Christ, but lately it seems to me that it more often damages the faith of others. I think about my own culpability in this as, over the past years, I have been so often frustrated by how things are going in the Church, and express that frustration at home.
But there is also the reality that those frustrations are pointing to something real.
A while back, I wrote about the sin of scandal. Our disconnect between the faith we profess and the things we say, the attitudes we hold, and the candidates and policies we support, have an impact on others. When the Church fails the way it did in the abuse of minors over generations; when it fails the way it did at Steubenville, and people leave, it is hard not to think of Jesus saying in Luke 17: Those of you who lead these little ones astray…. better off to hang a millstone around your neck and jump in the water.
It matters, how we interact with the world. And this applies to abortion, yes, but it applies every bit as much to guns and environment and the dismissal of women who were assaulted and the embrace of lies about stolen elections and continued support of politicians who claim Christianity while brazenly breaking commandments by telling those continued lies.
These. Things. MATTER.
These things DRIVE PEOPLE AWAY FROM CHRIST.
A frequent commenter here often laments how the turning away from God is the source of all our problems in modern America. Well, that’s true, though it has been true at every moment throughout history; it’s not a new problem. The veneer of Christianity in the past covered a lot of not-Godliness.
But we cannot conveniently ignore the reality that when we represent God in, forgive my bluntness, crappy ways, WE also bear responsibility when people turn away from God.
Guns. Again.
When the school shooting happened last week, I was on a much needed, long-delayed 36-hour overnight away with my husband.
One of the ways I’ve been trying to deal with the question of anger versus seeking Godly justice is simply to cool down my emotional temperature by insulating myself from the news. It’s hard to keep the temperature down when you’re constantly being triggered.
These days, most of my car time is devoted to my chromosomally-gifted daughter’s love for pop music, so I don’t really have time to listen to much news. When I do turn on the news, I often feel my heart crunching, my chest compressing my breath, and I recognize that stillness is what I actually need. So I often turn off the radio altogether and drive in silence.
Thus, I didn’t actually know there was a shooting until pretty late, and it wasn’t until Friday that I realized it happened at a private Christian school.
My first reaction, before I knew it was a Christian school, was that it wasn’t worth getting angry, because I know perfectly well nothing is going to change. A horrible, jaded reaction, but one I’ve been conditioned to by the incredibly dysfunctional relationship between American politics and the idolatry that is gun culture.
My second reaction happened the following morning, when a neighbor flagged me down, near-hysterical, to tell me that while she’d been out walking with her twin two-year-old grandchildren, she’d found a loaded gun lying on the sidewalk. (Well, anyway, it had a clip in it.) Less than two blocks from my house. “It’s spring break!” she cried. “Any kid could have found that and killed themselves!”
That was when I got angry. Because she is right, and the idolatry surrounding gun ownership—yes, I just said it again—insists that “freedom” (which is not the Catholic definition of freedom, but some twisted secular one—ironic, given that gun advocates are nearly universally Christian) is more important than protecting life. I spent a lot of time that day reminding myself that the world to come is the point, not how close—or not close—we come to mirroring the Kingdom in this one.
My third reaction happened when I realized this time, a Christian school had been targeted. I thought, I wonder if NOW it will make a difference. Because the people who have made guns an idol to worship almost universally profess Christian faith AND already believe themselves to be a persecuted minority.
Rather than attempt to reflect myself, since I’m clearly not the right person to do so, here are two extremely level-headed, not-polemical, Christianity-centered responses to the shooting, and by extension, to the political movement that has enshrined rigid resistance to any gun reform above life, human dignity, and Gospel values.
https://haleystewart.substack.com/p/homeschooling-is-not-the-answer-to
So when CAN we speak?
Last week’s post on the double standard between MAGA devotees and “wokeism” began as an attempt to discern whether or not to reach out to the podcaster and the guest and push back on said double standard.
It didn’t really help, except insofar as I realized that such communications have to be made in love. Actually, I suppose it did help, because I realized: when you have no relationship whatsoever with a person, how CAN you reach out in loving correction? So that answered my dilemma about whether or not to reach out.
The problem is that you can’t talk to people you don’t know, because difficult conversations have to happen in the context of authentic relationship. But you also can’t talk to people you ARE in relationship with, because it damages the relationship.
So how are we ever to escape this toxic, excrement-filled antithesis of the Gospel that we as a society have landed ourselves in?
And how are we to evangelize? Because that’s literally, fundamentally the call of discipleship! To preach good news and bring hope.
Of course, come to think of it, neither side in this debate—leave wokeism out of it and let’s just talk about so-called social justice Catholics versus so-called “traditionalists”—people who believe their world views are formed by the Gospel, and yet hold opposing views. None of us come across as spreading good news. Or hope. We all just sound nasty, toxic, and every bit as excrement-filled as the secular spaces around us.
And I am very aware, these days, of how such hypocrisy, nastiness, toxicity, judgment, and lack of self-awareness is, even now, pushing people right out of Christianity. With good reason, honestly.
I think there is a desire we all share at some level. It goes like this: we didn’t USED to have this problem, so surely if we just turned back the clock, things would go back to The Way Things Used To Be.
The trouble is that The Way Things Used To Be looks rosier in the rearview than it actually was. In the sainted time before All The Hard Questions, we had domestic abuse where women were told to to stay and put up with it; we had clerical abuse in the shadows and overt discrimination against minorities and poisoning of the waters so extreme, a river caught fire, and no pathway for women to give of any of the gifts God gave them except that of motherhood.
There WAS no glorious day when things in society or the Church were as God intended. There is only different dysfunction.
But I am rambling. I wrote that wokeism/MAGA post to try to discern God’s will, and when I did, I found another, more fundamental one, lying beneath it: Then when do we speak? And how?
I still don’t have the answer to that one.
Wokeism vs. MAGA…
Here’s a thing I would very much like to understand: how the word “woke” can be used as an insult by Christians.
Look up “awake scriptures” on your search engine and see what comes up. Awake is a GOOD THING for a Christian. It is literally all over the New Testament.
Honestly, I don’t really understand what “woke” even means to the people who use it as a pejorative. It seems to be just the latest demeaning, un-Christlike insult for people who lean left. (Feminazi, libs, libt—(will not finish that one, you get the idea).
Last week, I decided if I am looking for podcasts, I should try to find some that are specifically Catholic. So I did a basic search, and I happened across an episode that featured a woman talking about being “awake, not woke.” I had a pretty visceral knee-jerk reaction against this, but I thought, perhaps this is precisely the thing I need to listen to. Maybe this idea of “awake, not woke” is the middle ground I am looking for.
It wasn’t. Middle ground, I mean. No, it was a laundry list of why everything about “woke” culture was evil. I believe that word was even used.
The history this woman claimed was presented as a settled fact with not one detail of evidence that would help me even know how to begin fact checking it. So I’ll leave that aside.
But among the other arguments presented against “wokeism” were a plethora that were listed with no self-awareness. In other words, every single one of them applies to the MAGA crowd just as much as it applies to the “woke” crowd. For instance:
Wokeism functions like a cult, wherein people stop thinking critically. (Also true of MAGA? Yup.)
It’s all about power. (Also true of MAGA? Yup.)
People cut others out of their lives because they disagree. (Also true of MAGA? Yup.)
It leads naturally to violence, i.e. the BLM riots. (Ummmm…. January 6, anyone?????)
It is about indoctrination. (And laws that suppress historical realities because it might make whites “feel bad,” allowing only a narrative of American greatness narrative? That’s not indoctrination?)
Using “privilege” as a pejorative. (Like using “liberal” or “woke” as pejoratives?)
Targeting Christians with violence. (Like… I don’t know, the increase in hate crimes?)
It has control of media, which misleads people via bias. (Ummmmm…. in the last week we learned that Fox News knew they were telling lies about the election and about Dominion, and kept doing it because they thought otherwise their audience would jump ship for more extreme far-right sources… How does this not count toward calculations of media bias?)
I am laying all this out because I am honestly baffled. I look at everything in the world through the lens of my Christian faith. Through the teachings of Jesus. And for sure, some things in our culture are really far out there. (Although a lot of it has to do with greed and the idolatry of money, and nobody in Christian World ever seems to see that as a problem…)
I would have much more sympathy for someone who wanted to call out the problems in the far left if they would acknowledge that THE SAME PROBLEMS EXIST ON THE FAR RIGHT. At least as much.
But instead, there’s a double standard. All these things are problems when it’s on the left, but when it’s on the right, it… makes us a Christian nation? I don’t get it. Why is “wokeism” bad, and MAGAism isn’t?
There’s an old truism about how eventually, when you go far enough left and far enough right, you end up in the same place. Hence, you have Hitler on the right and Stalin on the left. But they’re both brutal dictators. Eventually, the extremes wrap around and hold hands.
I know this sounds like my usual rant, but I am genuinely baffled. I really want someone to explain this. Because from my point of view as a Catholic, we cannot demonize one variety of extremism while wholeheartedly embracing another. That’s not Christ at all. Jesus had plenty to say about people who held one standard for themselves while condemning others.
#unworthyofchrist
Truth Over Tribe talks extremism
Turning my little corner of the web over to the Truth Over Tribe podcast today, because I thought this was so valuable.
Their most recent guest is a Christian woman who worked counterterrorism under George W. Bush and came back to work under Trump, so she has seen the shift from worrying about Islamic extremists to home-grown extremists. Her perspective on what has happened politically in our country was really interesting, but most interesting was the nuance on what constitutes extremism and how there is a “funnel” effect that takes people who aren’t extremists and can radicalize them. There were good messages for me as well, as a person who is alarmed by this trend and doesn’t always handle communications around it in a healthy, holy way. Really good listening.
https://podcast.choosetruthovertribe.com/episodes/extremism-elizabeth-neumann?hsLang=en
For Love of a Good Challenge
It is a quiet Sunday morning as I sit here writing. Practicing NFP means that because I must take my temperature even when I don’t have to get up early, I am often up for the day long before the rest of the house. I do my neck and back and shoulder and leg stretches—targeting all the various parts of my body that could render me nonfunctional if I do not—and listen to Scripture or podcast.
Intentional Catholic has been on my mind a lot lately, but the questions I need to grapple with are all still too unformed.
I’ve always valued a good, challenging homily or reflection. One that calls me to look honestly at myself and my weaknesses. It’s not a threat because I am a type A person who wants to be better today than yesterday, and better tomorrow than today. I genuinely want to follow God above all else. I am okay with being challenged to face my failures. How else can I be better tomorrow than today?
I suppose this is a natural outgrowth of being a musician and writer. Critique is baked into the formation of both those professions. First my band directors, then my private flute teachers, looked for what was holding me back and taught me how to climb over the obstacles to the next plateau. In the writing world, I’ve worked with editors and critique partners for sixteen years. Before my novel caught the eye of my literary agents, I collected something like four hundred rejection letters, of all lengths and varieties, from the one-line generic to the “I want this to look thought out but it’s really a form rejection” to the heartbreaking near misses. One music rejection, out of all others, still gives me the heebiejeebies, because what they pointed out was right and I should have seen it myself.
All this to say, I value being challenged. Good challenge. Not nonsense, conspiracy-theory, poor information, one-set-of-rules-for-The-Other-Guys-and-a-totally-different-one-for-mine challenges. Those just enrage me. And I would say I suspect they enrage God too, except I suspect God has a teeny bit broader perspective on the universe than I do, and probably finds it grieving rather than enraging.
As I approach the news these days, I’m constantly filtering my immediate, knee-jerk reaction through the knowledge of my biases. That is a relatively new manifestation of my spiritual journey. I am a little slower to get angry now because I can see the inconsistencies inherent in my knee-jerk reactions. It doesn’t remove the inconsistencies, but just being conscious of them helps put things in perspective.
What that doesn’t help with is the deep, existential, Godly-justice-centered outrage inspired by the failure of so many others to recognize THEIR inconsistencies.
And so I struggle on.
Worth Listening To
I have been listening to a couple of podcasts lately– Truth Over Tribe and The Bulletin— and thought that the things I’ve been hearing there are more worth sharing than any of my own thoughts at present. (In case you’re wondering: I listen while I’m getting dressed, cooking, and driving. Because I always wondered when people have time for things like podcasts.)
Truth Over Tribe aims to challenge both the political left and the right on topics surrounding Christianity, and they really do. This one on Christian nationalism was particularly good because it was a sober and balanced, Christ-first take. The same for the episode on “should Christians be culture warriors?” Balanced, Christ-first; rather than advocating one or the other, on this issue they land in the ambiguity of “yes.” And the one on transgender issues was interesting and challenging.
The Bulletin comes from Christianity Today and is more a commentary on current events. I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to stick with that one long term, because I’m not yet sure how useful it is to my spiritual journey. But they ran an interview with Bono, of U2, which I am finding really beautiful and want to share.
This and that at the start of a new year
I have been trying out a few new podcasts lately.
The Bulletin is an offering by Christianity Today. On the Jan. 6 episode they were discussing the nonsense with the speaker of the house vote and the group of twenty obstructionists who made this such a farce. The hosts were talking about how, for some people in positions of power, it’s not about actually doing anything, or having goals to accomplish, but simply to “have the requisite amount of rage.”
This resonated because I have just completed a year of wrestling with how (or if) anger—sometimes rage, let’s be honest—should factor into the way a Christian interacts with the world.
After that last post in December, where I really let loose on the way people react to people who are homeless, I recognized that haranguing does nothing, because nobody even bothers to read. In my own defense, I waited weeks to write that post, trying to discern if it was supposed to be written at all. But still, nobody read it. Since then I’ve been quiet, not because I don’t have things to work through, but because I recognized a need to approach things differently.
I don’t have it figured out yet, except that a good friend suggested that I pose questions—with a genuine openness to listening to the answers.
The second tidbit I’ve come across in a podcast—although I wasn’t forward-thinking enough in the moment to note which podcast, or which episode—was a throwaway comment about how anger is never the primary emotion; it is always the secondary one, a response to the deeper emotional reaction, a way to protect it. That lit up receptors in my brain because my spiritual director had said that to me several years ago, and I’ve been wrestling with it ever since.
In this case, the podcaster said that the problem we have with rage in America is that we don’t know how to grieve. We have had so much to grieve in recent years. The loss of our ordinary in the pandemic was a grief response, but America doesn’t know how to do it, so we just get angry.
That rang VERY true to me. Anger is a protective reaction to avoid having to deal with the grief of lost high school years, of isolation, of fear of losing a child who’s already come close to dying because of a respiratory virus, etc., etc. It’s easier to be angry than to face the deeper pain.
Not to be too tiresome, but that reminds me of yet another cultural reference:
Anger is easier, quicker. You will know the dark from the light when you are calm, still, at peace.
Hmmm. I sense some real commonality with Christianity there, and with contemplative prayer in particular. 🙂
Intentional Catholic 